The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
by LaBelleEpoch
Summary: This is the story before the story. The story of the network that Katniss Everdeen fell into when she pulled out those berries, of the people who made her the Mockingjay. Because you don't just scrounge up an ally like Plutarch Heavensbee at a moment's notice. This is the story from behind the cameras, the dangerous, thankless work that set up the revolution and then waited.


Hi everyone!

So one of the things I started to get really interested in about the Hunger Games was the relationships between the mentors. What it must have been like for them to have to watch all those kids go through what they went through. Obviously that led me to Haymitch, which made me start thinking. He was the clear leader of the revolution in the Districts and I started to wonder how that happened and what he had to do. So that's what I'm going to try and show here. I really want to try and get all the others in- we'll definitely see Mags and Chaff, but I'm not sure about Finnick and Johanna. But I'm going to try and show what made the defiant boy from the 50th Hunger Games change to the beaten drunk who falls off stages and doesn't care, and then change again to the leader of an rebellion.

So that's what I'm trying to do here. I hope you like it!

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**Prologue**

We each had our roles to play, okay? That's the first thing you gotta understand. Revolutions aren't born in a day, and this one wasn't even born in a year. So we've all been exactly who they expected to see, ever since they day we signed ourselves up for this mess.

Next thing you gotta know is that it really did start in 13. They were different once, they weren't the naïve, ambitious rats they became. They fought longest and hardest when their enemy breathed down their necks and their lives were on the line. But then they got out. Got safe. Got forgotten. And all the fire and the passion of their young soldiers turned to the arrogance of children in victory. But that wasn't till years later. When they first won, when they first played dead long enough for the Capitol to turn its back, they still remembered. Remembered their brothers and uncles and mothers and cousins still bound to the tyrant. Remembered freedom and the lives left to be saved. Remembered the sun and sky and longed to return to it.

So they bided their time a few years…20, maybe 25, and then they started to feel us out. Sent signs you'd only notice if you were looking for them. Wrote message in the codes of the past, the codes of anger and war and gun smoke. They had the ideas, the resources, the spirit. In 12, we were starving beasts, no time for anything but the next meal. Revolution was never more than a dream, spoken in hushed voices around candlelit tables in the dead of night, among the closest of friends. We were beaten dogs, lying down to wait for more. Thirteen had anger and backbone. They were the dog that bites the hand that feeds. That's why they were blown to hell and we were spared. Spared and allowed to celebrate Panem's victory each year by sending our children to the slaughter. Fear was all we knew, fear and desperation. So when they first started asking, they got curses and fear and betrayal. I know I wasn't the first one they asked. Just the first one fool enough to say yes.

Haymitch Abernathy, national poster boy for rehab clinics everywhere—and father of the revolution.

I didn't do it for her. I ain't really the loving kind and even if I was it wouldn't have been her. She was too pretty, too naïve, too charming. That many people like you, I guarantee you got something to hide or you ain't ever had the spine to stand for anything. No. It wasn't for her. Not for blue eyes ,blonde hair, and golden pin. I got plenty of things in my life to hate over, and Maysilee Donner is just another item on the list. We can't all be star crossed lovers.

So another thing you gotta remember: I didn't love her. Barely would've known her name if not for the Games. But that didn't mean I wanted to watch her throat torn out or feel her slippery fingers go limp in mine. I didn't want to be the last face she saw or the one to deliver her last words (5 years later and 2 bottles deep). So yes. The mockingjay was for her. The mockingjay was created in honor of Maysilee Donner. Fat lot of good it's doing her.

That's the only part of our shambling plan that wasn't an accident. We had contacts but nothing like power or control. When the Everdeen girl stormed into my train, all sullen faced and unfriendly, we'd been sitting on our thumbs for near a decade. Waiting. Knowing if our timing wasn't just so, none of it would matter. You see, we couldn't decide when our revolution would begin, not me or Mags or Finnick, not 13, not even Plutarch, who was ours from the beginning. And even though I saw some sorta wild chance I might only bring home one wood coffin from the 74th Hunger Games, that didn't make her the Mockingjay. I didn't want her to be. I told them she was rude and selfish and bitter. That she wasn't one for ideals or sacrifice. Because how could I get her through this gruesome Game of war and bloodshed only to lead her off into Real war and bloodshed. But then she pulled out those berries and it was our sign, our spark. I couldn't stem the flood so I added _Katniss Everdeen, 16 _to the list of lives I'd stolen, debts I owed.

That list started long, and it only got longer. I spent 25 years building a revolution. Twenty five years of pickled livers and dead children, of sacrificed allies and betrayed spies. The revolution wasn't born in a day. It took 25 years, and I was there for every blasted moment. They were lucky they need a leader no one feared, because I was broken when I came to them, too broken to be fixed. Only dulled. Jagged edges smoothed. The drunk was my part, my role, my character, but it was also my life. Finnick and Mags and Chaff and all the others…they had private selves. They at least pretended they could shut it out, shut the Capitol away behind the mountains. But I was the first.

And this is how it happened. This is how the revolution was sparked, nurtured, and finally used to ignite the girl on fire.

This is how the revolution began in District 12, and ended there too.

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So that's the Prologue. Hopefully Chapter 1 will be done soon and the real story will begin!


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